Zack could feel the eyes on him as he walked into the slums. He could not blame them. He was covered in blood and caked with dust and the planet only knew what else. His uniform was torn, revealing more than one healing wound on his body. He had lost one of his pauldrons at one point, but he had not bothered to look for it in the aftermath. His gloves were long lost to the wastes. He had pulled them off to make searching for healing items in his pockets easier. The blood on them made them too slick to get a good grip on anything.

He had returned to headquarters, to report the successful termination of the target and the deaths of Sephiroth, Angeal and Genesis to Lazard. Even thinking the words made him want to be ill. He had watched it happen, watched as each of the planet's greatest warriors fell beneath the blade of a madman, and he still did not believe it. Part of him still hoped that it was all some kind of hallucination, that he would get back to Shinra HQ later and find Angeal prowling the Soldier floor to scold him for missing their scheduled training session.

Angeal. He could not think about Angeal. He had leapt at Strife first, despite his lingering injuries… or maybe because of them. He had been the first to fall, too. Angeal had held Strife at bay for a few strikes, but Strife had not been testing him this time. He went straight for Angeal's throat. His mentor had been dead before the cure spell had ever left Sephiroth's hand.

Zack felt bile rising in his throat and swallowed hard to keep it at bay.

He had walked back from the cliffs, not trusting himself behind the wheel of a vehicle in his grief stricken state. It had been a long walk after a long, horrible fight, but it had given him time to cry and gather himself as he prepared to make his formal report. No one stopped him as he walked through the lobby. An entire elevator cleared out for him. He took it straight up to Lazard's office.

The blond director of Soldier had taken one look at him and let his head drop into his hands.

The debriefing went quickly with Zack giving the driest, briefest report of the incident he could. He explained the discovery that the former president and Professor Hojo had been feeding Strife information. He mentioned the report of Strife showing up in the city and their decision to draw him out. Zack even told Lazard about their time travel theory. The man had been too shocked to argue with him.

Zack told Lazard that he was putting in for leave. He agreed to stay around for a few days while things were sorted out, but then he wanted out of Midgar for a while. He needed to get away from the memories and the questions. He was now Shinra's most powerful Soldier. The last of the Elite Firsts. It was all that he had ever wanted, but this was not what he had imagined at all.

He had tried to go back to his apartment for a shower, but his hand began to tremble as he reached for the doorknob. He knew that the rooms would be empty for the first time in weeks. They had all agreed to keep an eye on each other. They rotated between apartments to keep anyone from being sure of which men were occupying which apartments. That last night, Genesis had stayed in his spare room.

Genesis was not waiting to make sure he returned from his late night walk to burn off nervous energy. There was a copy of Loveless on the coffee table that Genesis would never read again. Zack knew he would have to move it… did not know how he would find the strength. Only weeks ago he would have hidden the damned thing under the couch cushions, just to watch Genesis squawk.

Genesis, who had bled out from a massive wound on his chest that would not be healed with materia. He had begged Zack to make Strife suffer with his last breath, a bloody hand clenched in the front of Zack's standard issue uniform top.

Zack had fled the Shinra building entirely after that.

He had started walking and did not stop until he was in the Slums. He could not handle the artificial brightness and cleanliness of the upper city. The lower city was darker, more dangerous. It suited his mood.

He did not pay attention to where he was, could not bring himself to care. It was not until he was in Sector Five that he realized how far he had gone. Too much farther and he would hit the wall. There was a checkpoint that he could cross, but it would only bring him back out to the wastes again. He knew better than to go back there right now. Just seeing the dry, cracked ground might push him over the edge into true madness.

That part of the slums was quieter, almost deserted it seemed. Hardly anyone shared the road with him. The few houses in the area seemed deserted, which was odd because some of the buildings in the area seemed nicer than the building that had been cobbled together from pieces of scrap in the more populated areas.

One of these buildings was quite large and seemed sound. Most of the windows were whole, if covered with dirt. The large wooden doors up front looked sturdy, surrounded by heavy grey stone. Only the roof seemed to be falling apart, but that could have been easily patched. It looked like…

There's a girl in a church in the Sector Five slums who needs you.

Zack did not want to look… did not want to have anything to do with what that murderer thought he should do with what was left of his life. Another part of him was curious to see what someone like Cloud Strife would kill for. More than that, he wanted to know what Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth had died for.

The doors gave a groan when he pushed them open. The inside of the church was much like the outside, a little run down and dirty but not anything like the rest of the slums. A few of the pews were broken or missing and spots of the wooden floor were pulled up. The entire floor in front of the altar was torn apart and flowers grew in a faint patch of sunlight that had managed to get through the plate above. It was beautiful… and empty.

Zack let out a ragged laugh as he came to stand at the edge of the flower bed. That would be something. Strife had come back and changed things enough that this mystery girl he expected Zack to find and look after no longer existed. It would serve the bastard right. With the exception of the garden, there was no sign that anyone was living there at all.

Despite the emptiness, the church was welcoming. He felt a measure of peace for the first time in weeks. Briefly, he considered curling up beside the flowers and sleeping until he felt halfway human again.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the shock in Sephiroth's face as Strife's glowing blade slid home over and over again. The bastard moved too fast for Zack or Sephiroth to block. Strife was constantly leaping, reaching for the next blade and driving it into the General's flesh faster than Zack could even see. Zack had caught Sephiroth before he could fall, had listened to the wet gasp of the General's dying breath… watched the life flee his eyes.

Yeah, he was not sleeping any time soon. Or possibly ever again.

He reached behind him and pulled Strife's sword from the magnetic sheath that held it against his back. It was his prize and his burden to bear. Like the first time they had met, Strife refused to kill him. Instead he disarmed Zack, forcing him to listen as he related their supposed history. Some other version of Zack had deemed Strife worthy of saving. He had dragged Strife's comatose body from Nibelheim to Midgar before being murdered by the army on the cliffs.

With his last breath, that other Zack had charged Strife to live for both of them, shoving the Buster Sword into his hands. Strife had handed him the Fusion Sword and asked to be released from that promise. He died quietly and without a struggle. Zack almost felt guilty for not making him suffer as Genesis had asked. At that point, he had just wanted it to be over.

Setting the monstrosity aside, he let himself sink to his knees, bone weary. He did not know how to make sense of anything that had happened. Their lives had all changed in the blink of an eye. He hated Cloud Strife more than he had ever hated anything in his whole life. He knew that kind of hatred was a sickness that would poison him, but he did not know how to let it go.

He was all that was left of Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth. He was the proof that they existed, not as Shinra's weapons, but as men who lived and breathed. Zack wanted to be worthy of that kind of responsibility.

Time lost meaning as he stared at the flowers. With the plate covering the slums, the light never really moved or changed. It was easy to lose track of everything as he remembered his fallen friends. Everyone accepted death as a very real possibility of their profession, but he never expected to outlive Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth. They were the untouchable heroes. Even if he had lost one of them, he should have had the others to help him manage. They were never put on missions together for that reason.

For a moment he was angry that they had left all this responsibility on his shoulders. Shinra was falling apart. The president was dead, murdered in his office. The heads of the science department were killed the same night. Now the three strongest military leaders were killed in the same fight. Zack had been trained by all of them, even if Angeal had been his only official mentor. That put him above even the other Firsts, men who had been Firsts much longer than he had.

Even in the brief time he had been back at the Shinra building, he could see how the others looked at him. They expected him to know what happened next and trusted him to see them through. It was the same look they had once given Sephiroth. Luxiere and Kunsel should have been blowing up his inbox with messages. Their silence spoke volumes… and it hurt almost as badly as losing Angeal, Sephiroth and Genesis.

"Hello?"

Zack tensed, readying himself for an attack. Weeks of being on high alert had frayed his nerves. He could see the girl stiffen, her face wary. She was young, though probably not too much younger than he was and dressed simply. Her long brown hair was bound up in a braid. She was obviously here to work in the garden, a wicker basket of tools clutched in her arms.

He forced himself to relax, pulling his hand away from the sword hilt he had not even realized he reached for. Whoever she was, she was not a threat to him.

There's a girl in a church in the Sector Five slums who needs you.

When she seemed sure that he would not attack her, she straightened her shoulders and let out a little sigh. As she came down the aisle, she grinned, "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you, Mister Soldier."

"It's alright." He replied, wincing at how rough his voice sounded, "I shouldn't be intruding."

Her laugh was light and sweet, "It's a garden in an abandoned church in the slums. You're hardly intruding."

Zack shrugged at that, "I guess I'll just stay here a bit… if it doesn't bother you."

"Soldiers are usually kind of scary…" She was close enough for him to get a good look at her. She was a pretty girl with a mouth made for smiling. Her green eyes were soft with sympathy, "You just look sad. If being here is giving you some comfort, I won't take it from you. Just don't hurt the flowers."

"I wouldn't dream of it." He replied, shifting into a more comfortable position. He stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back on his arms to watch as she worked with the flowers.

She made her way around the edge of the garden, checking to see that the soil was damp and pulling weeds where she found them. From time to time, she would stop and run her fingers over the petals of one flower or the leaves of another. Sometimes she hummed out a little tune, almost under her breath. Zack wondered if she knew she was doing it.

Once she had checked over all she could from the edge, she slipped off her shoes and moved into the middle of the garden. She stepped far more carefully, until she reached a bare patch where she could kneel. Zack smiled a little, she had been serious about not hurting the flowers.

Like the place itself, there was something peaceful about watching her work. She did not seem to pay him any mind, even as he watched her. Few could be so unconcerned with the eyes of a Soldier on them. Then again, she was obviously something different.

Go to her

Be with her

Protect her

"I'm sorry."

The girl's voice pulled her out of them memory of Strife's words. Her hand was poised over one of the flowers, head turned slightly as if she could hear something. When their eyes met, she blinked and went back to pulling weeds with a faint blush, "You lost someone dear to you recently…"

"Several someones, actually." Zack said. It was not a hard thing to guess, but he was curious as to what would make her mention it, especially since she had not said a word since arriving, "How did you-"

She giggled abruptly and then quickly covered her mouth, horrified, "Sorry! It's just… puppy is so… cute!"

Zack forced himself to sit up, cocking his head to the side and studying her. The giggles began again and she flapped a hand at him, "You have to stop! This is so inappropriate. I'm not laughing at you, you know. It's just… with your head like that… he called you that once. He wrote a letter to his mother right after you became his student to describe you to her. He said it was like having the puppy he always wanted."

Angeal. He could not breathe. She was talking about Angeal.

"She wrote him back… told him that she thought he was finally ready for the responsibility." The girl smiled down at the flowers, her fingers caressing the petals, "Every time he worried about training you or doubted himself, he reread that letter."

"He… doubted himself?" Zack asked, voice raw. She spoke with such certainty, like she knew him.

"All the time. You were his first student. He wanted to be sure he did right by you and taught you what you needed to know to survive. He's afraid that you'll think he wasn't proud of you. He was never properly excited about your promotion because of the situation you were all facing." When she looked up at him, her eyes were glassy with unshed tears, "You exceeded his expectations in every way. He was so proud… they all were."

When she did not continue, Zack whispered, "Don't stop. Please?"

The girl blinked rapidly, forcing tears back. She came over to him, kneeling down so she could wipe her thumb along his cheek. He had not realized he was crying again. With a little sound of annoyance, she pulled a handkerchief from her basket and dabbed at his face, "Sorry. Had dirt on my thumb and didn't realize it. Let me get that for you."

"What?"

"I… don't have control over it." She admitted, apologetically, "Your friend was very insistent, but I'm afraid he drifted away from me again. Don't worry, though. That one is very strong willed. He'll watch over you for a long time yet. I think there were others, but I couldn't… I'm sorry."

They sat in silence for a moment while she wiped the tears from his cheeks. The handkerchief was filthy when she was done. With a small chuckle, she took his hand and pressed the damp cloth into it, "Here. You keep that."

"Sorry." Zack scratched the back of his neck, aware of how awful he must look, "Today's been a weird day. I… uh…"

"Need to talk about it?" She asked, hands still wrapped around his fist, "I've been told I'm an excellent listener."

Zack shook his head, "It's… you don't need to hear about something that awful."

"What? Because I'm a girl or something?" She said, fixing him with a glare, "I'm tougher than I look. Try me."

He told her everything. It was the opposite of the report to Shinra, full of thoughts and emotions that had been too complicated to express earlier. Like the urge to comfort Strife before their fight, he knew instinctually that he could talk to this girl. She was practically a stranger and yet he told her things he was barely able to admit to himself.

He described Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth as men, not the warriors Shinra advertised. Talked about their quirks and habits, the annoying things they did and said. He told her how much he missed them already and how he feared going home, because it meant that he had to accept the loss of them. Talking about it was cathartic. The sorrow was still there, raw and stinging like a fresh wound, but it was easier to bear than it had been only an hour before. Through it all, the girl sat beside him, holding his filthy hand.

"I want to do right by them, but I don't know what to do." Zack admitted at the end, "I don't even know where to start."

"Well. If it were me, I'd start with a shower. You're a mess."

Her tone was so frank and insensitive that it surprised a laugh out of Zack. She was grinning at him again, "I mean it! If you can't handle your own apartment, go commandeer somebody else's. That's a military term, right? Maybe take that Lazard guy's shower… make him think you've snapped. It could be funny. Either way, you can't begin to heal with their blood literally on your hands."

"Oh man… I didn't even think…" Zack tried to pull his hand from hers, "I'm sorry, miss. You shouldn't be-"

"Stop it. I'm not stupid. I knew what I was getting into when I touched you." She rolled her eyes and tightened her hands on his, "You need this, something to ground you. I don't mind."

Zack stopped struggling and relaxed again. Her thumb was rubbing soothing circles against his knuckles. It was kind of nice to have someone to tell him what to do, even if it was just something as common sense as cleaning up after a battle. She really was helping to ground him, "Alright. Shower. I can do that."

"Then sleep." She instructed, "Even if it's just a little. You need to sleep before you can make any kind of plans. Come back down here, if you have to. I keep a blanket and a pillow in the back. The pews aren't comfy, but… well, the offer's there. Once you get some sleep, things won't seem quite so scary."

"You're right." Zack said, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand, "It seems so obvious when you say it like that. Of course I need to clean up and sleep before I try anything else."

"You're grieving. Allowances can be made." She stood and shifted her grip around his wrist so she could help pull him to his feet, "Come on, up with you."

Zack let her pull him to his feet. When she let him go, he tucked the handkerchief in his pocket and reached out to take her hands in his, "Thank you… for everything."

"I'm Aeris, by the way." She said, almost an afterthought, "It seems silly to do introductions now, but when I first walked in and saw you, I felt like… I knew you. Like, I should already know your name."

"It's Zack." He said, giving her fingers one last squeeze and letting them go.

He picked up his sword and fixed it to his sheath again. When he turned back, Aeris was still watching him. She gave him a nervous smile, "I'll see you again, right?"

Be with her

Protect her

Zack nodded, "Of course."

It was as strange a goodbye as their hello had been, but as he walked back out of the church, he knew he would see her again. Like much of the last weeks, it had a feeling of inevitability to it. A part of him resented Strife and wanted to struggle against what his life had become. He wanted to leave the city and never come back, ignoring Shinra, Aeris and whatever else was waiting for him.

It would mean spending the rest of his life on the run. That would not have been what his friends would have wanted for him. It was no way to honor their memories.

Shower then sleep. That was all he needed to do today. Angeal always said that a person needed a good night's sleep before making any big decisions. When he woke up, he would try making a big, Angeal style breakfast. Maybe he would try reading the copy of Loveless that Genesis had left on the coffee table. He could go steal something out of Sephiroth's apartment too… just so he had something tangible to remember the three of them by. After that, he would figure out what came next. He had nothing but time, now.

I want to take a second to thank 10kiaoi once again for the original prompt. This has been an absolute blast to write. I'm so glad you put this out there. Also thank you to everyone who made it this far. Every kudos and comment has really made me feel great. Hopefully you enjoyed the conclusion.

I'm ComeBackWhen on Tumblr as well. I do have some things posted there that haven't made their way here yet, if you're looking for more of my writing. Feel free to swing by and say hello if you do the Tumblr thing.

A lot of people have asked if there will be more to this. I have something I've been working on to kind of close out this 'verse. I'm not sure when it will be finished, but I'm hoping to have something sooner rather than later.